The bill would require safety belts and stronger seating systems to protect occupants of such buses, improve driver training, and require anti-ejection glazing windows to prevent passengers from being thrown out of the motorcoach.
It was a direct response to the March 2, 2007 motorcoach crash in Atlanta that killed five members of the Bluffton baseball team and the driver of the motorcoach and his wife. Bluffton is about 85 miles north of Dayton.
The bill was part of the transportation bill that passed the Senate Wednesday, and a Brown spokeswoman said Brown is hoping that an identical measure will be included in the bill as it moves toward debate in the House.
“This bill will save lives,” Brown said in a statement announcing passage of the measure. “Five years after a tour bus that claimed the lives of seven young people from the Bluffton University community, the Senate has passed legislation to enact critical tour bus safety standards.”
Rubio: Brown is most liberal senator
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was in Ohio last week campaigning for Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who is running against Sen. Brown this year.
Rubio was quoted in a Florida paper, The Sunshine State News, as praising Mandel as a “genuine American hero who served his country proudly in the United States Marines,” and saying that Brown was “among the most liberal senators in Washington.
“He has voted in lockstep with the Obama administration for runaway spending, mountains of foreign debt and the unconstitutional health care takeover,” he said.
Brown himself earned the ire of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in 2008, when he campaigned in Maine on behalf of her Democratic challenger, former Congressman Tom Allen. Collins earlier this month wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post decrying the lack of civility in the Senate, arguing senators should not campaign against one another.
Push for highway bill
A national labor union has released a radio ad and brochures aimed at blanketing House Speaker John Boehner’s district — an effort to push Boehner and House Republicans to pass a highway bill that would beef up investment in the nation’s roads and bridges.
LIUNA — the Laborers’ International Union of North America — last week released a radio ad that compares Congress’ failure to act on the federal highway bill to a game of “Russian Roulette.” The ad points out that one-fourth of the nation’s bridges are deficient or obsolete, and the average bridge is now 45 years old, dangerously close the average bridge lifespan of 50 years.
The group bought ad time in Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton media markets.
The Senate passed its version of the bill last week.
This is the second round of ads aimed at pushing Congress to meet a March 31 deadline to pass the bill. The first round of ads targeted Boehner, R-West Chester, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and aired in Ohio and Kentucky.
Compiled by Jack Torry and Jessica Wehrman of the Washington bureau.
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